Calculate Your Global Footprint fir Earth Overshoot Day

Wednesday 2nd August 2017

The Global Footprint Network, an international research organisation, marked today, August 2, as Earth Overshoot Day with the launch of a new mobile-friendly Footprint calculator at www.footprintcalculator.org. Earth Overshoot Day is the day when humanity’s annual demand on nature exceeds what Earth can regenerate over the entire year.

The new Footprint Calculator allows users to measure their own demand on nature (Ecological Footprint) and assess their personal Earth Overshoot Day. A user’s personal Earth Overshoot day is the date Earth Overshoot Day would be if all people had their Footprint.

A personal Earth Overshoot Day earlier than August 2 means your demand on nature is higher than the world average. If it is earlier than April 24, it is higher than Germany’s average. (See here for all countries.)

For Earth Overshoot Day this year, Global Footprint Network, along with 30+ partners, highlighted solutions and individual pledges to #movethedate. If we moved Earth Overshoot Day back 4.5 days every year, we would return to living within the means of one Earth before 2050; we are currently using 1.7 Earths. Reducing the carbon component of the global Ecological Footprint by 50% would move Overshoot Day by 89 days.

The new Footprint Calculator goes beyond assessing users’ impact on the planet and carbon emissions. It allows users to play with options, learn about solutions, and connect to brief facts about sustainability. A person’s Ecological Footprint is the amount of productive surface area required to provide all he or she uses, including areas to produce food, fibres, and timber; to accommodate urban infrastructure, and to absorb carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuel.

The new calculator, still a beta version, is only available in English, but future iterations will become country-specific, multi-lingual, and more playful. This first phase of the new calculator was funded by MAVA Foundation and developed in partnership with Free Range Studios.

The new calculator is based on the latest data and methodology from Global Footprint Network, which tracks the ecological resource use and resource capacity of more than 200 countries and regions from 1961 to the present. These resource accounts draw primarily on United Nations data sets.